


Market Day

by gingerswag



Series: Wander Home [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Autistic Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Middle Ages, Past Forced Prostitution, Past Rape/Non-con, Slavery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:54:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29494632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerswag/pseuds/gingerswag
Summary: Dean and Cas are headed to market to get supplies. Cas doesn't seem to think much of it. Dean can't help but be afraid of leaving the safety of Cas's inn.Interlude between Wander Home parts 1 and 2. Set two weeks after Wander Home Part 1.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Wander Home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147427
Comments: 346
Kudos: 308
Collections: Destiel ✦ The Road To Freedom





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my lovely readers!!!! GUESS WHO GOT A SNOW DAY!!!! School got canceled for the kiddos and since I'm a teacher that means I get a day off too!!! Whooohooo!!! What do I choose to do with my day off?? WRITE FANFICTION OF COURSE!!
> 
> Ok so this is NOT the start of part 2. This is the beginning of a market scene I really wanted to write! I thought I would be writing a one shot lol but I got carried away. This will probably have 2/3 chapters. Hope you enjoy!!

It’s market day.

It’s market day, and Cas wakes him at three to begin their travels.

Dean gets up easily, obediently, and doesn’t say that he is nervous.

He’d been warned about this four days ago. He’d been warned, and has been trying to convince himself it would be ok since then.

When Cas had told him, there had been a moment where Dean had panicked. He’d panicked, had felt his heart jump into his throat, had been alarmed enough when Cas said they’d be going into town to ask “Which one?” without second-guessing his words.

“The close one,” Cas had replied, and Dean had felt a ridiculous amount of relief considering there never would have been any other answer.

Of course they wouldn’t be going back to the town he’d come from, which he’d walked away from for eleven days. Of course they wouldn’t be going to the town where John could still claim him back, where Alistair stalks the streets like a hunter.

Dean had felt stupid for his moment of fear, but had let out a breath all the same.

He doesn’t want to go back to the town he came from.

He doesn’t want to go to any town at all, if he’s being honest. He likes Cas’s inn, with its warm fires and smiling people, would stay hidden here, safe forever, if he could.

But he likes Cas even better than he likes his inn. And Cas needs help, and wants company for the long journey, so here Dean is getting ready, even though Cas had told him repeatedly that he doesn’t have to come.

They eat bread at the table and blink sleep from their eyes. Cas sets the porridge and stew out in the dining area when they finish. The customers will have to feed themselves today.

“They know they’re supposed to leave the coin on the counter,” Cas tells him. “Some won’t, though many are honest. It is what it is. We always take a bit of a loss, on market day.”

Dean nods along, as if it makes any sense to him.

At John’s there was no trust. No one would have paid if they didn’t have to. It was Dean, and sometimes Sam along with him, who was sent to market each week for supplies. John couldn’t have left the inn unmanned for even an hour without being robbed to the bones.

A lot of things are different here, though. Market day does not break this pattern.

For one, at John’s, Dean went to market each Saturday. Here, Cas tells him they only make the journey to market once a month.

It makes sense, Dean supposes. In the old town, it took him an hour to walk from the inn to the market. Here, they are far from civilization, and Cas tells him it will take them 14 hours at least by cart to get there.

“We should get there before sundown,” Cas tells him, “Though not by too much. We’ll buy some of what we need today, before the market closes. We’ll stay at the city inn overnight, and buy the rest in the morning, before heading back.”

Dean should say, “Yes, Sir.”

“Will Luna be alright?” is what he says instead.

He flinches a bit after he speaks, surprised by his own audacity.

That keeps happening. His thoughts, his real thoughts, keep slipping out of his mouth, instead of the mindless obedience he’s always been trained to follow.

It’s dangerous. Or, it should be.

It should be, but it keeps happening, because his training isn’t being reinforced anymore. Cas hasn’t gotten mad at him for speaking, not once, even when he’s being disrespectful, like right now.

Instead, he keeps answering Dean like his thoughts matter. Dean doesn’t know how to feel about it. It makes him nervous, a little, because he’s becoming so bad.

Deep down, though. Deep down, he likes it. He likes being listened too.

Cas doesn’t disappoint him this time around, either. He smiles at Dean, like he cares about Dean’s worries.

“She’ll be fine. We’ll take breaks to make sure she doesn’t get too tired of pulling the cart, and there are stables for her in town.”

Dean nods, satisfied. He’s come to like Luna, over the past few weeks. She’s gentle, as Cas promised, and hasn’t been as much of a rival for his affection as Dean had feared.

Dean finds himself genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. But he also trusts Cas to take good care of her. Just like he takes good care of Dean.

Cas bundles them both up in coats and furs before they leave, though it’s a warm day for winter. Dean is grateful for it. It’s not cold enough even for him to see his breath when he talks, but it’s chilly all the same, and they will be riding in the cart outdoors all day long.

They bring food for the road and coin for the market. Cas hitches the empty cart to Luna, and directs her towards the road. Then they leave, though it’s still dark, and Dean turns his head to look back at the inn as it fades from view like he isn’t sure he will see it again.

He’s staring backwards long after the building has disappeared from sight, and doesn’t turn back around until Cas starts to look at him in concern.

“Are you alright?” Cas asks, and Dean nods, blinking at Luna’s shadowy form in the dim light.

“Yessir,” he mutters, though he isn’t sure if it’s true.

The moon that had lit his journey when he found his way to the tavern is gone from the sky, and Dean feels small and scared.

He hunches in on himself where he sits on the bench, trying not to think about the last time he was on this dark road.

He shuts his eyes, and tries to push panicky thoughts from his mind.

It’s stupid to be so afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. He’s been to market a million times. It’s not like they’re going back to the town he’d come from. It’s not like anyone from John’s inn is going to recognize him, and grab him.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Leaving the inn doesn’t mean he’s never coming back.

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

It’s just.

It’s just. Everything has been so different, at the inn. Everything has been so much better. Everything has been so good, in a way Dean has never experienced before. The past two weeks have been the best weeks of his life.

Cas has fed him three times a day, without fail. He hasn’t been hit even once. It’s warm and he sleeps in thick furs, alone and unbothered all night long. People don’t grope him, don’t scream at him, don’t even call him names. They don’t see a whore when they look at him, because Cas dresses him in his own soft and modest clothes, taken in with a few stitches of thread to fit his size better.

He feels safe, in the inn. He feels safe like he never has before.

He feels safe with Cas, feels safe from Cas, trusts him in a way that frightens him. He trusts that Cas isn’t going to rape him or beat him or force him to do awful things. Even now, sitting alone with him in the rattling cart, he cuddles closer to him for warmth and security from the dark, rather than leaning away as he would with anyone else.

That feeling. That he can be around Cas and not be so scared, so on his guard for pain, because Cas doesn’t want to hurt him. That feeling hasn’t gone away.

But. There is a whole world outside the inn, a whole world that Dean knows from brutal experience has no interest giving him anything but terror. And Cas can’t keep it all away from him, he just can’t.

The inn. The inn is Cas’s domain. His _home_. Maybe, maybe, if he’s very daring and very presumptuous, Dean might even call it _their_ home.

Cas can protect him, in their home. He gets to decide what happens to Dean, in there, and so far he’s decided that everything that happens to him is going to be good.

Dean trusts Cas. But he doesn’t know if he trusts Cas to protect him from everything else, all the bad things that exist outside of the sturdy walls of the inn.

He opens his eyes again, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

It’s so dark.

There is a lantern attached to the cart. But it’s dim. It’s light extends to encircle Dean, Cas, and nothing else. Outside of that circle, Dean can’t see a thing.

He imagines hungry animals in the dark, and hungry men too, who will jump out at them and grab them and rape Dean and _kill_ Cas and-

A frightened noise makes it’s way out of Dean’s throat.

“Sir,” he whispers, suddenly terrified. “Sir, Cas, what if there are wolves?”

“The light of the lantern scares them away.”

Dean wouldn’t know, having spent his whole life inside the walls of a city. Cas lives in the woods, so he must know better. He must know that this is true.

It still feels like a flimsy protection, that the flickering light between them is the only thing keeping them from the jaws of beasts.

“But. Bandits. What if there are bandits.”

“There wont be.”

“But there were! There were bandits on the road, before I came to your inn. They got me, they almost killed me!”

Cas stiffens then, looking over at him sharply, and Dean cringes at his sharp look.

Is he mad?

Dean doesn’t know why he would be. But he rarely understands the reasons he gets hit.

“What?” Cas says, “There were bandits? On this road, the one to town?”

“No, no, I came the other way. But they were there, guarding the road, about a day out from you.”

Cas doesn’t answer for a moment, and Dean sits, frozen, as they clatter their way onwards.

Then, Cas reaches out, and takes Dean’s mitten covered hand in his own. Dean feels Cas squeeze it comfortingly through the fur.

“There are no bandits this way, Dean. They never come this close to town. There are too many guards around, and potential victims are too close to somewhere they could go for help. Any bandits that come within a day’s travel of the city would get caught and hanged. They know this, and they stay away. I promise, Dean. I’ve never had an encounter with a bandit, in the whole time I’ve grown up here. Besides,”

He pauses. Pulling his hand away from Dean’s, he uses it to open his coat.

Inside of it, Dean sees a dagger strapped to the lining.

Dean feels his breath catch.

“Even if someone was stupid enough to attack us, I wouldn’t let them hurt you.”

It’s a ridiculously arrogant thing to say. Cas is strong, yes, but he’s strong for a teenager, and has nothing on the muscles and sheer size of the bandits Dean had encountered. He’s only one person, and his six inch blade would be useless against the swords and axes the men who’d grabbed Dean had carried.

If bandits attacked them, the both of them would be dead within a minute.

His mind knows this, and so does his fear. And yet the useless vow, said so solemnly and sincerely against the immovable truth, makes some emotion arise from deep within Dean’s heart.

No one has ever promised to protect him before.

It makes Dean want to kiss Cas, a little bit, so suddenly and unexpectedly that Dean has to rip his eyes away from Cas’s lips for fear that he’ll give in.

He doesn’t know what to think about that urge, or know what to do about it, except to be sure that he should not, under any circumstances, kiss the other boy.

_Whore,_ he thinks at himself, angrily, and it’s the only thought he allows himself to have about it before he picks up the thought in his mind and carefully buries it under other things.

“Besides,” Cas continues, and Dean has to stop himself from looking up at him. “You can defend yourself too.”

Dean hears the shuffling sound of Cas rummaging through his pockets, and then, without warning, a knife is being placed in his lap.

Dean blinks down at it.

“Oh,” he says softly, and picks it up.

It feels heavy in his hands, and Dean feels strange.

He’s never been given a weapon before.

He’s not.

He’s not supposed to be able to defend himself.

He doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that Cas just said he can. He doesn’t know how to feel about the power that he’s holding.

It’s…unsettling, to say the least. To know that Cas trusts him with this kind of power. To know that he could hurt _(kill,_ his mind whispers) someone who tried to assault him. Even Cas.

He wouldn’t. He would never.

If Cas wanted him, he’d be pliant in his arms, no matter what he felt inside. It would be the least he could do for the boy, after everything.

It’s other people he’s not sure he would hold back on. And that’s what unsettles him most of all.

“Dean,” Cas says out of nowhere, and Dean jumps, being ripped from his spiraling thoughts.

Quickly, he tucks the knife into his own pocket, hoping he can just forget that it’s there.

“Yes, Sir?”

Cas swallows, looking wary.

“What did you mean, before, that you came from the other direction? Do you mean you weren’t traveling from this town?”

Dean blinks, looking at Cas, lit in the low light.

“The one we’re going towards? No, I came the other way.”

“I thought…that’s. The nearest town westwards is days of travel away.”

Dean nods. He knows this, now, from personal experience.

Cas stares at him. Dean starts to shrink.

Did he do something wrong?

“How long were you traveling?” Cas asks.

“Eleven days,” he answers, and Cas gapes.

“Dean! Alone? With no coat or shoes or….”

He trails off. Dean nods, unsure why Cas seems so upset.

Dean notices that the other boy’s fists have gone tight where they grip Luna’s reigns.

_Shit,_ he thinks, and wonders if he should try to move away, in case Cas is about to lash out.

He doesn’t move quick enough, though, and before Dean can make a decision, Cas is reaching out for him.

Flinching, Dean tenses, readying himself for a punch.

It doesn’t come. Instead, Dean finds himself suddenly with an arm around his shoulder, being tugged in. He ends up cuddled closer to Cas, tucked against his chest, with his head resting against the boy’s fur padded shoulder.

He blinks, unsure of what just happened.

“Dean,” Cas says, abruptly quiet again.

His voice has an odd strain to it. Like it’s shaking a little, just barely, being restrained from wavering much more by sheer force of will.

“Dean, what did you mean that the bandits got you?”

Dean bites his lip, and looks down, ashamed.

He shrugs.

“I mean they got me, Sir. They grabbed me and fucked me and. And. And. There were four of them. And. I thought they were gonna kill me, they kept pretending they were gonna. They held me down on the ground and they kept lunging towards me with their swords. One of them. One of them put me on my back and put his knife to my throat and said he would slit it if I cried while he fucked me. But I did cry. I did cry and I thought he was gonna kill me but he laughed at me instead.”

Cas squeezes him tighter and tighter as he speaks, until it’s almost painful. Dean thinks he should probably stop talking, but finds that he can’t, for some reason.

“I tried to run away when they saw me but they were too fast and they caught me. I don’t know why they let me go, after. I ran when they were done with me. One of them chased me for a while. I thought he was gonna grab me again, but he didn’t. I think he just thought it was funny to watch me try to run away, even though I was bleeding so much.”

He’s silent, then, finds that he’s done speaking. His emotions feel strangely dulled, dimmed like the low lantern light. Like he is upset, but. As if the upset is very far away. So far away he can barely hear it.

He finds that he is grateful to be being held against Cas’s chest all the same.

He listens to the _clip, clop, clip, clop_ of Luna’s hooves against the road for a while, and tries very hard not to think.

“Jesus, Dean,” Cas says eventually. “I. My God. I’m so, so sorry.”

Dean just shrugs again. He doesn’t think much of it.

“It’s ok. Got fucked all the time, back at John’s. There was this guy, Alistair. He would pretend he was gonna kill me too. He had knives and stuff, but sometimes he’d just choke me.”

“Dean,” Cas says. His voice sounds pained. “That doesn’t. That that happened doesn’t make anything ok. None of that was ok. None of that was ok.”

Weight resting against Cas’s solid body, Dean shuts his eyes.

He’s tired.

“You sound like Sam,” he says, distantly amused.

“Who’s Sam?” he hears Cas say above him. His voice rumbles in his chest, and Dean decides that he likes the feel of it.

“John’s kid. He was always good to me.”

“I’m glad someone was,” Cas whispers, and Dean hums in agreement. He’s glad Sam was good to him too.

“I miss him,” he says simply, starting to drift in his mind.

Cas is warm. He said there would be no wolves or bandits. Cas hasn’t lied to him so far.

He feels so much safer than when they left.

He doesn’t know why telling Cas about the bandits had left him feeling better instead of more afraid. But it had. It had, and now Dean feels calm like the open sky.

He trusts Cas so much.

Cas says something above him, but Dean doesn’t catch it.

“What?” he mumbles.

There’s silence for a second, and then Cas kisses his head.

“Nothing, Dean. Go to sleep. I’ll keep you safe, don’t worry.”

He doesn’t worry. He feels safe around Cas.

It’s so nice, to feel safe. It’s so nice. Dean wants to feel this way forever.

He does fall asleep, he thinks, sort of floats into a light slumber, feels the rumbling of the cart underneath his thoughts that have turned to liquid.

When he blinks his eyes open a few hours later, the sun has come up, and his fright is nowhere to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think??? Should I continue?? Believe it or not I planned for this to be almost entirely fluff but I guess I can't help but write angst. I'm thinking if I keep going though that I'll try to make the next chapters happier, since they will be more of Dean and Cas exploring the market and trying new things :)
> 
> I'm also accepting one-shot prompts for this verse now at my tumblr! No promises that I will write them but I welcome any and all ideas :)
> 
> You can come give me prompts and/or just talk to me at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/
> 
> Please leave kudos and a comment if you enjoyed :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I wrote another scene I didn't see coming. I still have several more scenes planned.....This might be getting upgraded from an extended oneshot to a sort of "interlude" between part one and two...
> 
> Also guys I got ANOTHER snow day today??? With the long weekend I literally worked 2 days this week.... and ofc I used my second snow day to write again!!

They stop for a late lunch about an hour outside the town. Cas pulls them over to a grassy field, and hitches Luna to nothing, trusting her not to wander away.

Dean sits on the ground while Cas gives the cow water, and stares to the east, towards the city that has come into view in the distance.

The forest had faded as they traveled onwards, as had the snow. The day had dawned crisp and bright, had transformed into one of those still and sunny days that leaves only the invisible chill in the air as a sign that it’s still winter.

The woods which had surrounded them and blocked their view of the world are gone, having trickled away to nothing as they emerged to rolling hills. Now, Dean can see the land unfurled ahead of him for miles. He sees the town down low in the valley, surrounded outside its walls by acres and acres of farmland. Houses and barns dot the gently sloping hills, becoming more concentrated as they get closer and closer to the town.

The town is larger than he’d expected it to be. It’s much, much bigger than the one he’d come from, which had been little more than maybe a hundred ramshackle houses, huddled together in the deep dark wild.

This town. Well. This town looks more like a city. Even from this far away, he can see that it’s made of more than little wooden houses and muddy streets. There are buildings, that reach higher than the trees, higher than Dean has ever seen anything go, buildings made of dark grey stone and clay. They get taller and taller and tighter together towards the middle of the city, centering on a church who’s steeple reaches up higher than anything in a final and desperate stretch towards the sky.

It looks like a fairytale, and Dean blinks at it, caught in its wonder. He doesn’t know if it’s excitement or apprehension he feels churning in his gut.

He’s never seen any place so large before.

It’s beautiful. It really is.

_Beautiful, and filled with a lot of people._

Dean swallows.

He doesn’t like most people. Most people don’t like him, either. He’s a whore, and people don’t like whores. Only Sam had ever put up with him.

_Sam always wanted to see a city. He’d love to be here, today._

The thought drops into his head like a slap. Dean pushes it painfully away.

Cas plops down in front of him, criss crossed in the dirt, and Dean tears his eyes away from the intimidating city to look towards the other boy.

He’s holding two bundles wrapped in cloth.

“Here, Dean,” he says, and passes one over. “Lunch.”

Dean stares at the unexpected bundle for a second before taking it.

He feels surprised that Cas remembered to pack food for him, and in the same moment feels stupid for being taken off guard.

He doesn’t know why he assumed he wouldn’t be eating today.

Cas always feeds him, three times a day, every day since he found his way to the inn.

He’d tried, in the first days after Cas had offered to keep him, not to eat so much, nervous about Cas changing his mind if he took up too many resources. He had tried to refuse meals, tried to say he wasn’t hungry.

Cas had looked at him with such concern each time, had asked him if he was feeling alright, had wanted to feel his forehead and send him to bed to rest. Dean had stopped trying to refuse meals pretty quickly, unsure how to respond to this treatment.

Since then, Dean has eaten three times a day, every day, eating the same meals that Cas and the customers eat. Cas hasn’t neglected to feed him even once, even when he was bad and a slut and didn’t deserve it.

So Dean doesn’t know why he didn’t expect Cas to feed him today, when he hasn’t even done anything worth punishing.

“Thank you,” he says, and he means it. He always means it, when Cas is good to him.

“Of course,” Cas says absently, unwrapping his own meal of bread and meat and cheese.

_Of course._

What a world he’s found himself in, Dean thinks, where food is an of course.

Food was never an _of course_ with John. He didn’t have to do something wrong to have it taken away. He just….wasn’t fed much. Whether he deserved it or not.

Dean looks down at the cloth covered parcel. He clutches it tight in his hands. It’s heavy, laden with good things that Cas had packed for him. For _him._ Because he takes care of Dean, and always makes sure his needs are met.

Whether they’re at the inn or not.

Dean unwraps the bundle.

_It’s not the inn that feeds you. It’s Cas. It’s not the inn that is good to you. It’s Cas. Things aren’t going to slip back to the way they were just because you’re out in the world again._

No hunger, no sex, no pain. It’s Cas that keeps those things away, and Cas is here with him.

 _It’s going to be ok,_ he tells himself, and tries to believe that it’s true.

Unfolded in his lap, his lunch sits, staring up at him, colorful against the moon-white linen.

A hunk of brown bread, a slice of yellow cheese, and two strips of salted beef.

It’s the same meal that Cas has, except that it’s not, because when Dean picks up the bread he finds three dried figs buried underneath it.

They’re purple and dark and shriveled, and the hand that isn’t holding the bread drifts unconsciously to touch them.

Dean likes figs.

He likes figs. He likes sweets.

This information about himself had only been recently discovered. He’d never really had anything sweet before, having subsisted in the past on nothing but watery porridge and the table scraps Sam would sneak him.

Even when he had managed to get his hands on other foods, he’d always been far too close to starvation to notice or develop any kind of opinion on what he was eating, other than that it was good because it eased the ache in his stomach.

That’s changing, now that he’s with Cas. Cas feeds him good food, real food, that fills him up and leaves him wondering at the taste and texture rather than cramming anything he’s given down his throat without a thought.

He can’t help it. He’s so overwhelmed with the embarrassment of riches he’s been showered with. Bread and meat and cheese and vegetables and _sweets_ like fruit and jam and honey that he likes so much it makes him ashamed.

This luxury of having opinions on what he’s fed has made him blush at his own audacity. It feels wrong of him to notice, feels wrong of him to think that he likes certain things more than others.

He’s grateful for whatever he’s given. He would never ask for more.

And yet here more is, anyway.

Dean looks up in amazement at the other boy, who’s eating his own fruit-less lunch, oblivious.

_He noticed what you like. He noticed that you liked sweets, and gave you figs._

The realization fills him with fear, for a moment, because having the things he likes exposed is dangerous. It fills him with shame, in the next, because he hadn’t hidden his preferences well enough and now Cas knows how ungrateful he is.

Then both of those feelings fade, and are replaced by a fondness that swells within him until it bursts.

Shy and pleased and bashful, he puts down the bread and picks up the figs, eating them fist because he likes them best and Cas already knows that so Dean doesn’t have to hide it.

The sweetness bursts on his tongue like wine, and Dean feels happy.

“Thank you for the figs,” he says when he’s eaten them, and Cas smiles at him, casually, like he doesn’t have any idea how much it means to Dean.

He hands out kindness like children hand out flowers. Thoughtlessly, easily, happily.  
Dean wants to kiss him again, and the thought doesn’t scare him so much this time.

“I meant to ask you if you wanted figs or dates, but you were upstairs, so I just took a guess.”

“I like both, Sir,” Dean says truthfully. “I like whatever you want to give me.”

 _I like you,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t say it, because even the though makes him so shy.

Dean takes a bite of his bread and cheese, mostly to make himself shut up.

“I think you’ll like the market,” Cas says. “People sell all kinds of dried fruits and candied nuts in huge barrels, and even different kinds of honeyed rinds and jams. Most stalls let you try a bit for free, in hopes that you’ll buy more.”

Dean swallows his food.

“Even me?” He asks, confused. “I, mean, you think they’d let me try them too?”

Cas frowns at him.

“Yes, of course. Why on earth wouldn’t they?”

Dean shrugs.

“I’m a whore,” he says, and leaves it at that.

People don’t want filthy whores around them, touching their things, scaring other customers away. No one even wanted to trade with him at the market back home, much less give him sweets to try for free. They would scowl at him and shout at him to go away, whacking him with brooms and sticks to make him leave so they didn’t have to touch him themselves.

It made it hard to do business. He had to do most of his trading with the handsy merchants, who dealt with him only because they knew they could get something extra out of it.

In front of him, Cas scowls, and Dean shrinks.

_Fuck._

He made him mad.

“You’re not a whore anymore, Dean,” he says, and Dean nods frantically in agreement.

“Yessir,” he mutters, and puts the food down, in case Cas wants to take it back because he was bad.

He keeps forgetting how much Cas hates whores.

He can’t keep reminding him. He can’t keep reminding him of what he is, or he’ll get angry again and make Dean go.

Being a slut is the only thing that’s made Cas raise his voice at him. He yelled at Dean when Dean tried to suck him off, and then yelled at him again the next morning when Dean had tried to give him the money he’d made having sex that evening. He’d gotten so upset, had almost started crying, it had scared Dean so badly because he’d thought Cas would be pleased.

He still doesn’t really understand what he’d done wrong, doesn’t understand why Cas had become so distressed. He’d just been doing what he thought was his job, had just wanted to show Cas he hadn’t made the wrong decision in keeping him, that he could be useful, that he would make money.

Cas hadn’t been happy, though. He’d been so upset, and Dean had been sure he was about to be beaten and told to leave. 

Cas hadn’t done either of those things, though. He’d just told him to never do that again, and Dean had promised he wouldn’t, confused but franticly apologetic all the same.

He’d meant it, he really had. He got the message. He’d misunderstood. Cas doesn’t want a whore, doesn’t want him to whore himself out. He doesn’t understand it, but he doesn’t have to understand why his owners want what they want in order to be obedient.

He meant to be obedient. He hadn’t meant to be so slutty and bad. But two days later when he was serving dinner, a man had squeezed his ass, and Dean hadn’t known what to do except to smile and flirt back at him. Cas had found him sitting on the man’s lap getting fondled, and it had made him upset again.

He’d yelled at the man to leave, and for Dean to go back to the kitchen.

And Dean had gone, and had burst into tears from shame and shock at his own behavior as soon as the door had closed.

He hadn’t meant to be a slut. He just had been. He doesn’t know how to stop.

Cas hadn’t understood when he’d tried to explain what had happened, because Dean hadn’t really understood it himself. But he didn’t beat Dean black and blue or throw him out, even though he should have, even though Dean had ignored his orders to stop being a whore for the second fucking time.

Cas is kind. So even though he hates whores and Dean had been a whore, he hadn’t hurt him or sent him away.

But he doesn’t let Dean serve the food in the dining room anymore, and doesn’t let him bring things to the guests' room by himself.

It makes Dean ashamed, because he’s such a slut that he can’t be trusted not to be, even when ordered. But it makes him relieved, too.

He doesn’t like strangers, and he doesn’t like being alone with them.

He’s afraid they’re going to want to do bad things to him, and he’s afraid that he’s going to let them.

He doesn’t know how to say no.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” he tells Cas, and he means it. He really does.

He’s sorry he’s a slut, and he’s sorry Cas has to deal with that.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Dean,” Cas tells him, and Dean looks away and down.

A moment later, he feels the tips of Cas’s fingers gently underneath his chin. They push upwards, and Dean lets them, moving his head with Cas’s pressure to look the other boy in the eye.

He looks earnest, and kind. It makes Dean blush, because he likes Cas so much.

“It will be alright,” Cas tells him, and moves his hand to cup his cheek.

Dean shuts his eyes, and pushes into the warmth.

“What if they can tell?” he asks quietly. “What if they can tell, and they…”

_Hurt me._

_Grab me._

_Laugh at me._

_Tell me to leave._

He’d be so ashamed to be told to leave in front of Cas. So ashamed to be pushed away with a broom like a fucking rat, in front of Cas, who treats him like he’s worth something.

“What if they can tell what, Dean?”

_What I am what I am what I am._

Dean swallows.

“That I’m a whore.”

He doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t want to see Cas’s gentle face screw up in anger.

If he’s about to get hit, he doesn’t want to see it coming.

Cas doesn’t hit him.

The thumb of the hand cupping his hand brushes along his cheek.

It feels nice.

“What has happened to you doesn’t make you a whore, and being a whore doesn’t make you a bad person,” he hears Cas say.

The first part of Cas’s statement floats away, useless. The second statement catches on his heart.

_Being a whore doesn’t make you a bad person._

The air is cold, but the sun feels warm on his face.

“No one deserves to be treated badly, whether they’re a whore or not. Having sex doesn’t mean people should get to hurt you, and it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve good things.”

Dean bites his lip.

“Like sweets?” he asks.

He can hear the smile in Cas’s voice when he answers. “Yes, Dean. Good things like sweets.”

Dean opens his eyes.

He likes how the blue of Cas’s eyes matches the sky.

“Oh,” he says. “No ones ever said anything like that to me before.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas answers.

Dean shrugs.

“I thought you hated whores.”

Cas drops his hand.

“No. I just don’t think what has happened to you makes you one. But I do not hate whores, and I do not hate you, whether you’re a whore or not.”

Dean sort of wants to cry with relief.

“I am a whore,” he says, sort of desperately.

He wants Cas to understand. He wants Cas to understand that he is a whore, and to like him anyways.

He doesn’t want him to like Dean only if he isn’t a whore, only if he pretends, only if he doesn’t smile at men who grab his ass and let them touch him like he likes it.

Because he doesn’t know for sure that he won’t let that happen again.

He doesn’t want Cas to get mad at him if he does, doesn’t want him to realize he’s a slut and get rid of him.

He wants Cas to like him, even if he does let people touch him. He didn’t know that was an option. But if it is, it’s the one he wants.

“I am a whore,” he repeats. “You’re wrong, it’s what I am, I’m a whore.”

Cas looks at him strangely, and Dean’s heart seizes.

But he doesn’t yell at Dean or act disgusted or tell him, again, that he isn’t what Dean knows he is.

He just says “Ok,” and keeps looking at him kindly.

Dean’s hands twist into the cloth in his lap.

“Do you still like me?”

“Yes.”

He tugs at a loose string nervously.

“Would you still have given me figs, if you knew?”

“Yes.”

“And- You really think they’ll let me try the dried fruits and things? Even though I’m…even though?”

“Yes, Dean, I know they will.”

Relief crashes into him like a wave, and he feels something exhausted inside him collapse.

It feels good to let it.

“Ok,” he says, and nods, as if confirming something to himself. “Ok.”

Cas is looking at him with an odd expression on his face, one that Dean can’t quite make sense of.

It’s not anger, though, and it’s not disgust, and right now that is good enough for Dean.

Cas offers his hand to Dean, and Dean takes it, so happy that Cas still wants to touch him.

“It will be alright, Dean,” Cas says again.

This time, Dean feels like it could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys enjoyed!!!! Still open to prompts for this little story or other little oneshots as well on my tumblr btw. Please leave a comment/kudos if you liked this! :)
> 
> As always you can come talk to me/give me prompts at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/


	3. Chapter 3

It takes longer than Cas had expected it to to make it into town, and by the time they arrive the market vendors have begun their slow routines of closing up shop. There would be time for a few last minute purchases, if they were ending their trip instead of beginning it, but as it is it doesn’t feel worth it to Cas to try to start their shopping just as everyone else’s day is ending.

“Oh, well,” he tells Dean as they ride past the stalls. “We’ll just have to get up earlier tomorrow to get everything done.”

Dean hums absently in agreement, and moves subtly closer to Cas, eyes staring wide and round at the closing bustle that they’re passing through.

He seems nervous, Cas thinks, and that makes _him_ nervous, because he doesn’t want to have been lying to Dean about him enjoying the market.

He had meant what he’d said, when he’d said it. Dean seems to enjoy trying new things. The market is no fascinating carnival, but it’s full of good foods and spices and pretty cloths and jewelry, the vast majority of which they can’t afford, but that are nice to look at anyway.

And there are _some_ things that will be available to them, like the samples he’s promised Dean, and the cheaper, less extravagant items that they can justify buying by using them back at the inn.

It’s nothing too impressive, nothing Cas would write home about. But Dean is different than Cas. Cas has always considered his life to be very small, but Dean’s seems to have been even smaller. He’s been exposed to less, and has been allowed so few comforts in his life. Having come from such a state of deprivation, he is easily impressed by the simplest of things.

It makes Cas sad, to see how shocked and appreciative Dean is of average things like dried figs or warm clothes, but it’s also nice to see him find such clear joy in the pleasantness of everyday life.

It makes Cas appreciate his life more as well, makes him stop and take in the simple joys he takes for granted. And it makes him happy, to see Dean happy. It makes him feel proud, to be able to introduce Dean to so many new and positive experiences.

From across the street, a vendor advertises the freshness of his fish by shouting his promises to the dwindling crowd. Dean jumps at the loudness of his voice, and then curls into himself, embarrassed.

Worry curdles in Cas’s stomach like sour milk.

He’d wanted this to be a new and positive experience too. He’d thought there might be many new and positive experiences for Dean to try in town, from sampling dried apricots to seeing the beautiful horses the most affluent vendors would be selling to the rich.

He’d known, of course, that he’d have to be careful, that Dean is easily overwhelmed, that he’d have to keep the boy close to him and coax him out of his shell.

But Cas is easily overwhelmed too, doesn’t like strangers and loud noises and too much commotion. And he still manages the market, manages even to enjoy the market, by stuffing his ears with cloth so the noises aren’t so loud, and taking frequent breaks to the nearby field when the sights and sounds and smells start to get to be too much.

He’d thought he could share the market with Dean like he shares his bread and home. He’d thought, despite the boy’s traumas, that he’d manage somehow to make this trip a happy one.

He’s starting to second guess himself now, as he watches Dean take in the city. His uneasiness rises as they clatter along the roughly cobbled street, and Cas really considers the town through Dean’s eyes for the first time.

Right now, sun mostly gone from the sky, day ending dirty and tired and done, the world doesn’t look the way Cas had imagined it would, the way he had hoped it would for Dean.

The crowds are large and the people coarse and common. It’s loud and cacophonous and grey, because the city is built of stone and and so are all its inhabitants. Most of the vendors’ wares are already stashed away, and the tents and banners have been rolled up, leaving a colorless sea of dull wooden tables.

The ride through the streets is bumpy and jarring, because the streets are old and badly paved.

Cas is embarrassed, suddenly, of the town, of his small life, of the way he’d set Dean’s expectations higher than what the city deserves.

He knows, of course, that Dean is no adventurer, that his world has been no larger than Cas’s. But he feels ashamed of the meagerness of his offering, of how pitiful his most exiting exploits must seem. Even if Dean doesn’t know much more of the world than he does, he still wishes he could give him more, still wishes he could bring him things and experiences that would actually be worthy of wonder.

It’s the least Dean deserves, after what he’s been through, after how little he’s been allowed for so long.

Dean’s eyes are wide, gaze glued to the passing surroundings. It’s not because he’s impressed, though, Cas thinks, but because he’s scared.

The town is both too big and too small at the same time, overwhelming and underwhelming simultaneously. It’s too busy and hectic while at the same time being boring, is chaotic without being interesting.

_Like your life, that you’ve dragged Dean into. Like you, who’s company Dean has to put up with._

The city is dull and frightening. Just what Dean’s had enough of, in his life.

 _I shouldn’t have brought him here,_ Cas thinks, angry at himself for messing up yet again.

He considers the possibility of leaving Dean at the local inn the next day while he does the shopping.

Then he considers how Dean would probably take that, after Cas had invited him along, after he’d tried so hard all day to be helpful despite his lack of experience, after he’d put so much effort into keeping himself calm throughout their ride through the market.

The last thing he wants to do is leave Dean feeling like a dog tied outside a tavern, or make him think he’s being left in their room because he’d failed in some way. No, he can’t leave Dean at the inn, no matter how worried he is about their outing.

He will just have to suffer through it, he thinks, and hope that the experience isn’t too much of a disaster.

Even if it makes him feel ashamed.

They make it to the inn just as the sun sets for good. Leaving Luna and the cart to a young stablehand, they make their way inside.

Cas feels relieved to enter the building. He feels relieved to leave the disappointing world outside, feels relieved to have arrived at the town inn at last.

The trip wasn’t dangerous, but Cas feels for some reason like it was, feels like there had been some significant possibility that they wouldn’t make it here in one piece.

Perhaps it’s the stress of making the journey for the first time without his father, the anxiety of having someone else along who’s reliant on him, the terrible fears that Dean had shared, which Cas had had a harder time dismissing than he’d admitted to the other boy.

Or perhaps he’s just tired, and sore from riding in the cart all day.

Either way, he’s glad to be here. Next to him, Dean seems relieved as well.

“This is the Harvelle’s,” he explains to Dean, as they approach the counter. “I’ve been coming here every month with my father since I was a young boy. It’s a nice place, run by nice people. It’s nicer than our own inn, honestly.”

It’s also more expensive than their own inn, which he doesn’t tell Dean. Far from the nicest place in the city, it nonetheless costs more for a room than either he or his father ever really wanted to spend. But life in a town is pricier than life in the middle of nowhere, and it follows that the inns would be pricier as well.

“It’s fancy,” mutters Dean, who seems nervous about touching anything, sticking close to Cas and keeping far away from the furniture.

Cas smiles at him reassuringly.

“Not really,” he says, and it isn’t a lie. “They just have more access to a variety of things in the city, and can get things professionally made. They don’t have to pay the cost of transport, so it’s easier to get higher quality goods for cheap.”

It’s the truth, but Dean looks at him with an expression of skepticism.

“John’s inn was in a town. It wasn’t nothing like this one.”

 _John’s inn was a brothel with one whore,_ Cas thinks, but doesn’t say, because it would be cruel.

In reality, Dean has a point. This isn’t the cheapest place they could be staying. The town is moderately sized, large enough to keep four different inns in business within the city walls. The Harvelle’s inn is the second cheapest, with a cost that is manageable but stretches his budget a little more than he’s comfortable with.

He knows that when he was very young, before he began to be brought along on these trips, his father stayed at the other inn. It cost less, and saved money to do so. But his father never brought Cas there, started shelling out for a less sketchy stay at the Harvelle’s inn once Cas started tagging along.

The other inn doubles as a brothel, and not a nice one at that. The whores there aren’t barely more than children, like Dean is, and aren’t held there against their will. But it’s a place where men feel entitled to let their hands wander, to drink more than they reasonably should, to punch people who look at them in ways they don’t like.

Cas often looks at people in ways they don’t like, even when he doesn’t mean to. So he stays far away from that inn, and intends to keep Dean far away from it too.

“Well, that town was smaller, wasn’t it?” Cas replies in answer to Dean’s statement. “This one is larger, so I guess the inn is a bit nicer. Truly, it’s really not anything extravagant. I know the owner and her daughter. They’re simple, hardworking people. Don’t worry, neither of us will be out of place here.”

_You won’t be out of place here. People won’t look at you and see a whore who doesn’t belong._

He tries to soothe the worries he suspects are bubbling beneath the surface of Dean’s stress, without being uncomfortably direct, as he finds he often is. After hearing the fears Dean had confided to him earlier about being signed out and rejected at the market, he feels like it’s a reasonable assumption to make that this might be what’s causing Dean’s discomfort.

It seems that he was correct, as Dean looks at him searchingly, and seems to relax after a moment of considering Cas’s reassurance.

“Ok,” He agrees, and Cas smiles at him. Dean smiles tentatively back, and Cas feels happy.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”

The voice comes from in front of him, and Cas recognizes it immediately. Even before he’s turned to face it, he feels some part of the stress he’s carried with him the whole day melt away.

The words are brash, the voice sarcastic, but they reassure him all the same. That voice had always meant they had made it, when he would come here with his father. It meant an end to the exhausting day of travel, and the promise of a soft place to sleep.

“Hello, Ellen,” he replies, turning to face her.

Her face is lined with years of work, but her smile is familiar and kind. A pulse of relief rushes through him.

 _Finally,_ he thinks, and feels it in his bones.

Almost immediately, his eyelids start to feel heavier, his feet sorer, his body making its protests known now that it knows they’re so close to comfort.

“We’ve missed you, kiddo. Haven’t seen you in a good long while! Was starting to think you finally got sick of our ugly mugs.”

Cas smiles awkwardly, but then looks away, uncomfortable.

His eyes flicker to Dean, who’s staring at the floor, looking for all the world like he can’t hear the conversation at all.

Cas is glad for it. He hopes Dean really isn’t listening. He doesn’t want Dean to know how pathetic he’s been recently, how close he’d been to collapse before the boy came along.

“Of course not, Ellen,” he says in response. “You know it’s always a pleasure to see you and Jo. Things have just been. Hectic.”

It’s an underwhelming answer, vague and unspecific, his awkward method of trying to sidestep the coming questions.

Ellen’s raised eyebrow tells him his effort hasn’t been successful, though Cas hadn’t really expected it to be.

He can’t blame her for being critical. The fact that he hasn’t been around isn’t something easily hand waved away.

He’s supposed to come to town every month for supplies. He needs to come to town every month for supplies, or else the inn will run out.

But he hasn’t been back to town since his father died. 

Not even he really understands all the reasons why.

The first month, it was grief, primarily. He could barely force himself out of bed to tend to the animals and the customers. Thinking of undertaking such an exhausting and enormous trip by himself, one he had always taken with his father, had been so far beyond what he could force himself to do that he hadn’t even considered it.

The second month, he’d been so busy, had not yet become miserably used to running the inn alone. He’d found no way to scrape out a full two days from the week to travel to town, had no moment to think or breathe or eat beyond the few minutes he would lock himself in the kitchen to cry.

The third month, they’d started really running low on a lot of things, and Cas knew he would have to go to town to replenish them, whether he wanted to or not. He’d set aside two days of time he didn’t have, had prepared the food and the coin and the cow, had everything set up and ready to go, and then had never left the barn.

He’d been afraid.

Not of wolves or bandits, as Dean had been so worried about, but of regular people, of having to talk to people alone, navigate a whole world, alone.

His father had always done all the talking. He’d done all the trading, the bartering, the things that Cas didn’t know how to do. He brought him along, all the time, tried to show him how to manage. But Cas had always been too shy, too quiet, too strange, and never really participated in anything.

 _I can’t do it,_ he’d thought, that morning in the barn. _I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it._

So he hadn’t.

The consequences had been a long time coming.

Saltless stew, un-mended sheets. In the past few weeks, it has been difficult to keep the inn running at all.

The two weeks since Dean arrived have been the easiest since his father died in terms of workload, and the hardest in terms of actual supplies. He’s been scraping the dregs of the flour bags for bread, had been stretching the stews with potatoes and turnips instead of meats and carrots like he should.

If he’d missed another supply trip, the inn would have collapsed entirely.

Even so, he doesn’t know if he would have found the courage to go, without having Dean by his side.

It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to be so incapable. He doesn’t want Dean to know what kind of incompetent person he’s saddled himself to. Not yet, at least. Not for as long as possible.

“Hectic, hm?” Ellen replies, and Cas cringes from her critical look.

“Yes,” he replies shortly, wanting this conversation to be over. “Can we rent a room?

Ellen’s eyes drift over to Dean. He sees confusion pass over her face as she takes the other boy in.

He’s wearing good warm clothes now, is clean and cared for.

But.

It’s not too hard to read between the lines, what with everything else going on.

He’s still only been with Cas for two weeks, and the rest of his past shines through. He’s still far too skinny, and far too afraid. He won’t look anywhere near Ellen, is half hiding behind Cas, is curled in on himself like he wants to be invisible.

The bruises have faded, mostly. But the yellow shadows of them still linger, and Ellen’s eyes are sharp enough to catch them right away.

She looks back at Cas with a hard look on her face.

Cas blushes, knowing what she is seeing, but he doesn’t look away.

He’s not doing anything wrong, having Dean travel with him. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. He’s not doing anything wrong.

Nonetheless, it’s hard not to flinch away from the suspicion in Ellen’s voice.

“‘We?’” She asks suspiciously, and her cold voice is painful to hear. Ellen is a tough woman, a brash woman, who doesn’t take any shit. He’s heard her use that voice before, a million times, at drunkards and men who tried to start brawls in her tavern.

She’s never used that tone with him before. She’s always been kind to him, even when he was strange.

“Yes,” Cas says again, and leaves it at that.

He doesn’t know how to explain himself in a way that doesn’t violate Dean’s privacy.

But Ellen, predictably, doesn’t leave the conversation there.

“Does your daddy know about this ‘we,’ huh? Where is your daddy anyway, boy?”

The tone of her voice still hurts, but the words hurt even more.

 _Dead,_ Cas thinks. _Dead, six feet under, rotting away underground with the chickens that got too sick over the summer._

Ellen is still looking at him, is still staring at him, waiting for an answer, waiting with untrusting eyes for an answer a goddamn answer.

He feels his throat close up, and tears of frustration and grief spring to his eyes.

_I can’t do this. I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this._

The words are gone. They’re gone, again, at the worst possible moment.

This is what he was afraid of. This is what he was _afraid_ of. He can’t do this, can’t be normal, he can’t interact with people like someone normal. His dad is dead and he can’t talk for Cas anymore and Cas can’t talk for himself, he can’t _talk_ and now Ellen is going to throw them out, throw both of them out, even Dean who doesn’t deserve it. All because Cas is a freak, because he can’t explain, because she thinks Cas is doing something bad to Dean, because she trusted his father but of course she doesn’t trust him, the freak, the _freak_ who can’t even _talk_ can’t even tell her that his father is dead he’s _dead-_

“Cas’s father passed away four months ago, ma’am.”

Cas’s breath catches in his throat.

The voice is pretty and quiet, nervous but not terrified, not falling apart like Cas’s thoughts.

Dean is still staring at the floor when Cas turns to look at him in surprise. He’s still half hidden behind Cas, still shies away from attention like moss shies away from light.

His voice was unmistakable though, clear and strong enough not to be anything but a statement of fact, meant for Ellen to hear.

Looking back at the woman, Cas nods in confirmation when she makes eye contact with him.

Immediately, her face softens.

“Oh, Castiel. I’m so sorry.”

Relief rushes through him like breath.

_Thank you, Dean. Thank you so much._

His voice still feels caught. So he reaches over to grasp Dean’s hand, and squeezes it.

Dean’s hand feels warm in his own.

The boy is still not looking at him, is still not looking at anyone.

But he squeezes back.

And Cas knows that though he hadn’t spoken, Dean had understood.

Fondness wars with his relief for place as his most prominent emotion. His heart can’t decide if it’s still upset, after what Dean had done for him.

He doesn’t answer Ellen’s words of sorrow, but Ellen doesn’t ask him too. She moves on quickly, clearly realizing that Cas cannot bear to talk about it.

“And who’s this?” she asks, gesturing to Dean.

Cas waits a moment, to see if Dean’s sudden burst of bravery push them through the introduction.

Dean doesn’t respond, though, instead tightens his grip on Cas’s hand. He lifts his gaze from the ground, finally, but only to shoot Cas a look of panic.

It seems Dean’s courage is reserved for the people he cares about. And that list, Cas thinks sadly, doesn’t yet include himself.

“This. Um. This is. Dean.”

He forces the words out of his mouth awkwardly, because Dean isn’t speaking, and Ellen isn’t letting them go, so they will be standing there for the rest of time if he doesn’t say at least something.

“He’s. Well. He lives with me, now. He…works. At the inn.”

Ellen looks Dean up and down. Her lips purse.

“And he’s your…what? Your whore? Your slave?”

His anger shoots out of nowhere like an arrow in an ambush.

Unconsciously, he steps in front of Dean, as if to shield him, as if Ellen’s words are physical things he can protect Dean from with his body.

“He’s my _friend,”_ he spits, and then sets his jaw and glares. 

Daring her to say differently.

Behind him, he hears Dean’s breath jump, as if something had surprised him.

He had no attention to spare for that now though, too focused on staring Ellen down, scowling at her like his expression alone can stop her from being cruel to Dean.

She doesn’t look cruel, though, or disgusted, or anything else he’d been fearing.

Instead, she looks…almost approving. Her mouth has lifted, into a small smile, and her eyebrows are raised, like Cas has impressed her.

Cas scowls deeper, confused.

“A friend, huh?” she says. “I guess that means you’ll be needing a room with two beds?”

He blinks, feeling whiplash at the sudden change in tone.

He looks back at Dean for some explanation, but the boy is no help at all, is just staring at Cas with wide eyes and a dazed expression on his face.

Cas doesn’t know what is going on with Dean now, but he doesn’t seem upset, so Cas pushes that mystery aside and turns back to the more pressing confusion.

“Of course we’ll want a room with two beds.”

Five seconds ago he hadn’t been sure if Ellen was going to rent them a room at all.

The woman seems to have forgotten all about her previous suspicion, though, and for some reason she smiles even wider at Cas’s response.

“Of course,” she says, nodding back at him.

Her voice is a little too serious to match her amused expression, and Cas gets the feeling suddenly that he’s being made fun of, maybe.

He also gets the feeling that he just accidentally passed some sort of test, though, and that Ellen likes him now maybe even more than she had before. So he lets it go, and tries not to feel too stressed about it.

He hands her the money, and she leads them to their room. Cas requests that a bath be brought up to the bedroom, and Ellen says that it will be. Then the door shuts on the first exhausting conversation of this trip, and Cas puts his head in his hands.

Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blech not a fan of this one but too tired and busy to edit :(
> 
> someone requested Ellen and Jo make an appearance in this verse. Here's the first appearance, won't be the last :)
> 
> poor cas is very confused. ellen is a good lady whos just trying to look out for dean, but cas doesnt get whats going on. hes like >:( stop being mean to dean!! but thats not whats happening. but cas doesnt understand nuance or social situations so hes just like. whats going on. poor dude!
> 
> as always you can come give me prompts or talk to me at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/


	4. Chapter 4

He orders a bath, and it comes before long, steaming and hot and as tempting as sin.

Asked if he wants to go first, Dean looks at him like he’s been asked to walk off a tower above hard ground. So Cas washes first, because he doesn’t have the energy to argue.

He has to ask Dean to turn his back when he undresses, because the boy isn’t self aware enough to do it himself.

“Oh,” Dean says, softly. He sounds surprised, and Cas blushes.

He does turn his back, of course, but seems unsure where to look once Cas is in the water and tells him he can turn back around.

Cas feels bad. He hadn’t intended to draw attention to Dean’s complete lack of modesty, or the social norms around it that the boy doesn’t know. The last thing he wants to do is make Dean _more_ self conscious about not knowing how not to be a whore.

It’s just.

Cas has never been particularly modest. But for some reason the idea of Dean seeing him naked makes him want to sink into the ground with embarrassment.

He doesn’t know why. But he feels so hyper aware of his body whenever Dean is around.

He wonders what he looks like, in Dean’s pretty eyes.

He’s strong. Does Dean like that he’s strong? Does it scare him? Does being strong make Cas attractive? Or does it make him look like a brute?

He’s no beauty, like Dean, who looks like a fallen star. No, Cas is rough around the edges, and of simple features and make. Does this bother Dean?

Does this bother _Cas?_

It never had, before Dean came along. He’d never thought about what he looked like at all.

Dean makes him think about a lot of strange things, though.

Like how touching doesn’t always feel bad, to him. Like how he hasn’t held someone’s hand since he was nine and his father was scared they’d be separated in the market.

Like how he’s never been kissed on the mouth before.

_No._

Cas tries to focus his mind on washing, on washing quickly so the water is still warm when Dean uses it.

He’s semi successful. His eyes keep drifting over to Dean, though, to see if he’s looking at Cas at all.

But he’s not. He’s been looking at the floor, mostly, since Cas asked him to turn away, hasn’t turned his eyes towards Cas at all.

Cas can’t decide if he’s disappointed or relieved.

And that is too strange a feeling to unpack right now, or any time soon, so he ignores it, and washes efficiently, and gets dressed before telling Dean he can look up.

“Your turn,” he tells the boy, and then turns around right away, knowing Dean won’t ask for privacy like he had.

He’s right, and he hears the sounds of Dean taking his clothes off right away.

It still makes him blush. But over the past few weeks, he’s gotten a little more used to Dean’s immodesty.

He tries to anticipate it, like he had just now. It’s not the boy's fault that he doesn’t think to cover himself, or warn Cas before he lets his clothes drop. He’s been so mistreated. Cas tries to make up for it, with uncertain success he doesn’t know how to measure.

When he hears the sounds of Dean getting into the water, he feels like it’s safe to turn back around.

The boy looks small in the tub, even though the tub is small itself.

“Do you need me to bring you your clothes?” Cas asks, because he can see that Dean didn’t bother to grab any.

He knows Dean won’t think twice about getting up after he’s finished and walking across the room completely naked. Cas thinks he would die, though, and doesn’t have the heart to ask Dean explicitly not to do that, to further highlight his lack of modesty and make the boy feel ashamed.

So he asks now, if he can bring him clothes, hoping to avoid the situation all together.

Dean pauses where he’s running the washcloth over his arm. He looks at Cas like grabbing his own clothes hadn’t occurred to him, which Cas is sure it hadn’t.

“Oh,” he says. “Yes, please,” and Cas complies, bringing from Dean’s bag a grey night shift, not unlike the one he is wearing himself.

“I’ll leave this and a towel right here,” he says, placing the items on the floor besides the tub.

“Ok,” Dean agrees. “Thank you,” he adds, and Cas tries to produce a smile that isn’t as strained as he feels.

He sits on his bed and nervously counts the coin he’d brought as Dean bathes, though he has no worry that it isn’t enough. But it gives his hands and eyes something to do while he waits for Dean to finish, while he waits for Dean to unthinkingly stand up without asking Cas to look away.

When this does happen, eventually, Cas is relieved to have something to occupy him as Dean gets dressed.

“Finished,” the boy says as the rustling noises stop.

Cas finally looks up.

Dean looks soft, in the low torchlight, hair damp and tousled, covered in his loose nightshift. 

Somehow, this image makes Cas blush too. But it’s a warmer blush, like someone has wrapped his heart in thick wool.

It isn’t bright enough to see the echo of the bruises that still line Dean’s face.

Here, in the quiet dark, washed and dressed in sleep clothes, Dean looks drowsy. He looks relaxed. He looks safe.

It’s the most beautiful Dean’s ever been, he thinks, and his heart stutters as Dean smiles at him, slow and sleepy and trusting.

This Dean calls out to him like birdsong.

“Ready for bed?” He asks, and Dean nods.

The boy moves over to his own bed, placed parallel to Cas’s a few feet apart. He climbs up onto it, and snuggles underneath the covers as Cas stands to put the torches out.

When he does, he comes back over to his own bed and gets under the blankets as well.

They have both lied down at the edges of their own mattresses, and are curled up facing each other. Only a few feet of space separates their bodies.

In the darkness, Cas stares with his eyes open. He can make out the vaguest outline of Dean across from him, lying on his own bed.

Cas wonders if Dean has his eyes open too. He wonders if the boy is searching in the dark for Cas’s silhouette, as Cas is searching for Dean’s.

He hears Dean shift around, like he is trying to get comfortable.

A pause. And then, Dean speaks.

“Cas?” He whispers. His voice sounds loud against the canvas of silence.

“Yes, Dean?”

Another pause.

Dean takes too long to respond. Then he says, out of nowhere, “What time are we getting up tomorrow?”

Cas tightens the blankets around himself. They’re still cool, not having picked up his body warmth yet.

“Six AM, I think, if that’s alright with you?”

Cas can’t see Dean nod as much as he can hear him.

Then he waits, because he knows that’s not what Dean really wanted to ask, and he can tell that the darkness is making both of them too brave.

“Cas?” Dean says again, about a minute later.

“Mhm?”

“…Did you mean what you said?”

His voice sounds so vulnerable that Cas wants to reassure him immediately, has to stop himself from saying yes without knowing what Dean is talking about. He _doesn’t_ know what Dean is talking about though, so he forces himself to say that.

“About what?” He asks, and then waits.

He hears nothing in the pause, which means Dean is tense enough to not move a muscle as he gains the courage to speak.

“About…me being your friend?”

Cas’s breath hitches.

He feels like his heart has been kicked in.

Had he said that? When had he said that?

He wouldn’t have said that. Would he?

Is Dean…is Dean his friend?

_Yes. No. Maybe? Do you want to be my friend? Or is it something I’d be inflicting on you against your will?_

His hands clench in his sheets.

He’s been quiet long enough that Dean’s voice sounds small, embarrassed, ashamed when he speaks again.

“I just…cause you said. You said to Ellen that I’m your friend. I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean to. To. Think. To presume…”

He trails off, and Cas feels wetness gathering in his eyes.

Dean sounds scared. But not like he’s scared of Cas hurting him. He just sounds afraid of being rejected.

Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to him that Dean had probably never had a friend before either.

_Do you want to be my friend, Dean?_

He’s never had a friend. No one’s ever liked him enough.

Does Dean like him?

He’d said, when Cas asked him to stay, that he likes him. But Cas had never assumed that really meant Dean likes _him,_ with all his strangeness and social gracelessness.

No, he’d meant he likes the inn, and getting fed, and not being hurt, and likes that Cas provides him with those things. He’d meant Cas is tolerable enough that he can deal with his presence in return for the promise of safety.

Right?

“Sorry,” he hears Dean mumble at last. He sounds resigned, and he sounds humiliated.

It’s that that pushes Cas’s heart forward.

“Do you…want to be my friend?” Cas asks the darkness in front of him.

Dean doesn’t respond.

Cas doesn’t know how to get him to. He doesn’t want Dean, god forbid, to think that Cas doesn’t like him, that he’s not the most wonderful thing about Cas’s lonely life.

But he also doesn’t want to scare him, doesn’t want to say something that would pressure Dean into agreeing that he wants to be Cas’s friend, if he doesn’t.

He hadn’t meant to presume, either, when he’d told Ellen they were friends. He just….hadn’t been thinking.

It had just seemed right, at the time.

“I’ve never had a friend before,” he tries, an offering to the silence.

It’s accepted.

“Me either,” Dean admits, “John always said whores don’t get to have friends.”

On instinct, he wants to argue, wants to tell Dean that he isn’t a whore at all.

But he thinks of Dean’s insistence, earlier in the day, his absolute conviction that he is one.

He remembers that his own insistence that Dean isn’t one had led Dean to believe that he hates whores, and that he’d hate Dean too if he discovered this “truth” about him.

He doesn’t want Dean to feel like he has to hide his past, or behave a certain way in order to keep Cas from hating him.

He doesn’t want Dean to think that whores don’t deserve friends, because they do, and because Dean is going to keep thinking of himself as a whore for a while whether Cas agrees with him or not.

Telling Dean he isn’t a whore isn’t going to help him, right now.

“John was wrong,” he says instead. “All kinds of people deserve to have friends.”

And then he sort of stops, sort of pauses, hearing his own words spoken in his own voice.

Digesting their truth.

_All kinds of people deserve to have friends._

Maybe that applies to him too. Even if he is strange.

After all. It’s not like Dean isn’t all kinds of messed up too.

That doesn’t mean the boy doesn’t deserve friends. That doesn’t mean he deserves to be ostracized.

_All kinds of people deserve to have friends._

He likes Dean a lot.

He thinks maybe Dean likes him too.

The fact that he can’t see the other boy makes it easier to speak to him honestly.

“I’d. I’d like to be your friend,” he stutters, feeling rash and bold. “If you’ll have me.”

Then he holds his breath, anticipatory, like he’s on trial and waiting for judgement.

“I’d like that,” he hears Dean whisper, and he exhales with the relief of Atlas being forgiven.

“Thank you,” he says, then winces. “I mean. I’m glad. I mean. That…that makes me very happy, Dean.”

He hears Dean squirm around in his sheets again. From happiness, or just physical discomfort. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t frozen, tense with anxiety anymore.

Cas’s agreement made him feel better.

“That makes me very happy too.”

There’s a smile on Dean’s face. Cas can’t see it. But he can hear it, clear like a firefly in the dark.

The two of them are quiet after that, thoughts at last put to rest.

Cas pushes his face into the pillow, and his joy into tomorrow.

They fall asleep, content like curled up field mice in the winter, waiting patiently and certainly for spring to arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, ppl did share bath water in the middle ages. Yes, it's gross. It is what it is!
> 
> Also I literally made myself tear up describing them falling asleep curled up like little curled up hibernating mice ;~; they're literally so sweet ;~; they just want a friend, just want the other one to like them!!!!
> 
> @ppl who prompted Dean and Cas cuddles, don't worry, I didn't forget about u!!! The night isnt over yet!
> 
> As always u can come give me prompts or just talk to me at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK SORRY I LIED!! There are no cuddles in this chapter :( I'm sorry! I have most of a chapter written that involves cuddles and I thought it was gonna be the next one but it really doesn't fit so It's not happening until later. Sorry!!!! :( It will still be in this fic tho.

None of the things he’d feared come to pass, when they go to market in the morning. It’s as if the soft words of the evening have carried over into the dawn, banishing Cas’s worries, along with any possibility of those worries coming true.

Dean is his friend, and the day is good. Dean is his friend, so the day is good.

It thunders in, this day made good, world rumbling under its feet, shaking them awake in the early morning with the audacity of city life. The day is well on it’s way to beginning when they open their eyes, streets loud and busy and colorful already.

The weather is warm, to the point that they don’t bother to tie their coats shut when they leave the inn. It’s a false promise, one of those days that teases the idea of spring before taking it back by the next. They enjoy it all the same, and find in the sunlight the memories that tell them winter will, at some point, be over.

Before they start buying, Cas gives Dean one penny, the money he’d set aside for the boy’s purchases today. It’s not much, having been all that he could squeeze out of their small budget, which would be almost entirely spent on basic necessities for the inn. Cas had been ashamed at how pitiful the amount was, knowing how much more Dean really deserved, after all the work the boy had been doing.

Dean reacts like he’s been given a small fortune. 

He doesn’t understand, at first, and Cas realizes he hadn’t expected to be given any money for himself today at all. It takes several attempts at explaining before Dean understands that yes, the money is for him, and yes, he’s to buy whatever he likes, and yes, he does deserve it. No, Cas won’t take the money back, no, there’s no right or wrong answers to what he can buy, and no, the money for his food today isn’t going to come out of the penny he’s been given.

After that, he looks at Cas with a kind of wonder that goes beyond gratefulness, that seems to push the boy’s emotions beyond loyalty to something closer to faith.

It embarrasses, flatters, and alarms Cas in equal amounts. He decides to settle on embarrassment, because it is the emotion he’s most used to handling.

Dean takes the decision of what to spend his penny on very seriously. It’s sad, in a way, because the gravity Dean brings to the decision tells Cas that he’s truly never been allowed to choose anything for himself before. But it’s also sweet, and endearing, and makes Cas proud that he could provide this experience for Dean, even if it is just a penny.

The boy looks at every stand they pass, with eyes that are wide and amazed, but equally thoughtful and considering. If he’d thought Dean would be so overwhelmed with choices that he’d impulse buy the first thing he saw, he was wrong.

If he’d thought Dean would be overwhelmed at all, he was wrong.

The boy stays close to him, clutching his arm and tucking himself into his side whenever they pause to make a purchase, shy as he ever was. But he doesn’t seem afraid, as Cas had so feared. He doesn’t faint when people bump into him, or start crying at loud noises.

There are moments, of course, that leave him scrambling closer to Cas, like when merchants address their shouts to him directly, or when a wealthy man’s carriage thunders recklessly by, splashing the two of them with mud.

For the most part, though, Dean seems little more than slightly quieter than usual. And that, Cas thinks, may be as much due to his amazement as it is due to any fear he might be feeling.

It starts to dawn on Cas that he might have been projecting his own issues with the market onto Dean.

Cas has never liked noise, and he’s never liked crowds, and he’s never liked talking to strangers. Even now, he wishes his father were here to do the trading, so he doesn’t have to do it himself. Even now, he has bits of cloth stuck in his ears to muffle the cacophony around him.

He’d offered cloth to Dean as well. But Dean had turned him down.

“Taking it all in, Dean?” He asks at one point, as Dean cranes his head to stare at a juggling man across from them.

The boy turns back to Cas, cheeks flushed from excitement. He doesn’t smile, but his face is soft and open. It occurs to Cas, as Dean makes eye contact with him, that he hasn’t caught the boy staring at the ground even once since they’d made their way outside.

“Yes, Cas,” Dean answers, nodding. “I’m taking it all in.”

And that reassures Cas that his assessment had been right, that he hadn’t just been seeing what he wanted to in Dean’s expression, that he hadn’t again been misinterpreting body language and would at some point be finding out that Dean has been terrified the whole time.

No, it seems Dean really isn’t as afraid as Cas had feared he would be.

The realization dissolves his stress like honey in warm milk.

They run their errands in the order he always had with his father: physically largest purchases first, then working down in terms of weight and size from there.

“That way,” he explains to Dean as they make their way to the miller’s stall, “We can go drop our heaviest purchases off at the cart right away. Then we don’t have to worry about lugging them around as we buy the smaller things.”

They go to the miller’s, and then the weaver’s, and then to the man who sells the barley oats and salt. Dean hides halfway behind him at each stop as Cas trades with the merchants, but stares at their wares like they are foreign wonders.

The trading isn’t as bad as Cas had feared it would be, because for the most part he knows his lines, and no one forces him to deviate from the script by reacting in ways he hadn’t expected.

“Nine large sacks of flour, please.”

“Two bolts of linen, please.”

“Twelve sacks of barley oats, please, and two pounds of salt.”

The merchants tell him how much he owes, and he gives them the money, and then the interaction is pretty much over.

The errands take longer than Cas had planned, though, because his father isn’t with him, and even though it turns out he can mostly muddle his way through the social aspect of the trading, the physical aspect isn’t so easily taken care of.

They have to make twice as many trips back and forth to the cart to carry everything over, and the trips themselves take almost twice as long to make. Dean tries to help, of course, but he’s still underfed and undersized, and Cas ends up having to carry almost everything.

“We’re taking too long,” he says, after they’ve loaded up the cart after their third trip to and from the oat seller’s. He’s looking up, considering where the sun is in the sky, considering how much time they have until they’re supposed to leave.

“I’m sorry,” he hears, and he looks down, over to Dean, who’s face shows the first hint of real fear that he’s exhibited all day.

Cas addresses him.

“It’s because you’re not as strong as my father was. It’s taking us longer to get everything collected.”

He means it as a comfort, is trying to reassure Dean that it isn’t his fault and has nothing to do with his efforts, which have been considerable, or his perusal of the stalls, the total time of which has been negligible. 

Dean’s wary expression breaks into one of full alarm, and Cas realizes he must have said something wrong again.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” the boy says again, quieter. “I’m sorry, I’ll be better. I’ll be faster. I’m sorry I’m lazy, I’ll work harder.”

He makes his promise between pants, still catching his breath from the effort of carrying all those sacks of oats, faced flushed and hair in disarray. Despite the fact that he’s clearly been working as hard as he can, his eyes are bright with earnestness.

Damn it.

Cas wishes he would stop putting his foot in his mouth, or at least understand where he went wrong when it becomes clear that his words have had an unintended effect.

“That’s not- You aren’t lazy, Dean, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry that I said something to make you think that. I just meant- I only brought it up because we will probably have to camp tonight, on the way home.”

Dean blinks.

“Camp?”

“On the way back. It’s not safe to travel once it gets too dark.”

“Oh,” Dean says, and he doesn’t say anything else, but he starts fiddling with the sleeve of his coat.

_Fiddling with his clothes is something he does when he’s anxious,_ Cas remembers.

Fiddling with his clothes, hugging his middle, and digging his nails into his arms or thighs. The three nervous habits that Cas has picked up on, and memorized like a key to a secret code, which Dean’s body language might as well be, to him.

“Are you-”

Cas cuts himself off. He’d been going to say, _are you scared,_ but then he remembers that Dean lies a lot about that kind of thing, because he thinks being scared is something he needs to hide, for some reason.

No. Better to just reassure him of what Cas is pretty certain he’s nervous about, before he gets confused by Dean insisting he’s not afraid.

“It’s alright. We have the supplies, and I’ve done it before with my father, once or twice, when we didn’t make good time either. I have sleep rolls, and we’ll make a fire to keep away the cold and any animals. We’ll wake early and should make it back in time to serve breakfast."

Dean nods along to his explanation, listening intently.

“It’s better like this anyway. We won’t have to rush, and can leave in the afternoon. I wanted to enjoy the market with you today anyway.”

Dean’s face is still flushed from the exercise, but his face turns a little pinker at that.

“But…Luna?” he asks, and pauses, waiting for Cas to answer.

Usually Cas dislikes it when people are so vague, saying one or two words and leaving you to infer the rest, because Cas can’t figure out what they mean.

But Dean is so sweetly transparent about his concern for the cow that Cas understands immediately, and his heart swells with warmth.

“Luna will be ok,” he tells him. “We’ll unhitch her for the night so she can sleep. She’s a good cow, and won’t wander away.”

The worry in Dean’s expression eases, but he still looks over to the cow with concern in his eyes.

“Maybe I could buy her an apple as a treat? With my penny?”

Dean asks his question shyly, but hopefully.

Cas feels affection wash over him in a wave.

Not for the first time, he thanks whatever power there may be for sending Dean to him, Dean who understands him like no one else ever has, who cares about the things Cas cares about, who asks to spend his penny on Luna like Cas always had always wanted to do.

Dean who is his _friend._

Joy plays inside his head like music.

“I already bought her two apples.”

“Oh.”

“My father always gave me a few farthings when we came here. I always wanted to spend them on treats for Luna, too. But he wouldn’t let me.”

“Oh.”

“He thought I was odd for caring about her so much, and said we couldn’t afford to spoil her. But now he’s dead. So. I bought her some apples. So you don’t have to spend your penny on her, Dean. But not because you’re strange for wanting to. Just. Because. I wanted her to have apples, too.”

After he speaks, he looks down shoving his hands in his pockets, feeling strange after saying so much.

He rarely speaks so much in one go. And he almost never speaks unprompted, sharing information that no one asked for, for no reason that he can name.

He could have just said that he’d already bought treats for Luna, and that would have been enough for Dean to understand that he could spend his penny on himself.

It’s not clear to him why he felt the need to share all that, suddenly, why he wanted Dean to know he also used to want to spend his little money on Luna, but wasn’t allowed to.

Maybe so Dean wouldn’t feel strange about it, like Cas always did. Maybe so Dean knows the thing Cas knows, that he can’t quite put into words, the thing that has to do with them being friends and being cut from the same cloth and being so similar, in all the strange ways that matter.

“I’ll guess I’ll keep looking around then,” Dean says in front of him. “And spend it on something else.”

“Mmhm,” Cas agrees, feeling exposed. He can’t look up for some reason, and hopes Dean won’t think he’s strange for it.

They stand there, listening to the bustle of the city, Cas feeling stuck like a wheel in a pothole.

After a moment, Dean reaches out towards him, but Cas steps backwards on instinct.

Dean doesn’t try again, and when Cas does make himself look up, he finds that the boy doesn’t look hurt or upset about it.

_Understood,_ Cas thinks, and it feels like salvation.

“Maybe,” Dean starts tentatively, looking at Cas from under his lashes. “Maybe, if we’re not in a rush, we could….take a. A break?”

Cas flushes, embarrassed.

“I’m fine,” He says immediately, and it’s too harsh, judging from the way Dean cringes.

Cas looks back down, cringing himself at his mistake.

_I’m sorry,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t feel like he can say it.

There’s another pause, and then Dean tries again.

“It’s just,” he starts, very softly. “It’s just. I’m a little…tired.”

Cas has no doubt that it’s true, after the physical labor they’ve both gone through this morning. He also has no doubt that Dean would never, ever have admitted it, if not for Cas’s sake.

He’s offering Cas an out. He’s offering Cas his own weakness, in place of Cas’s own, to use as an excuse to take a few minutes to breathe.

Despite the fact that Dean never, ever admits when he’s tired or hungry or anything else. Despite the fact that he’s clearly still so scared of being hurt for having needs. Despite the fact that he’s still so worried about being deemed a burden and abandoned, that he had been so afraid just a few minutes ago at the idea that Cas would think he was lazy.

He still offers his own vulnerability for Cas to hide behind, instead of forcing Cas to acknowledge his own.

_Understood,_ Cas thinks again. And he starts to realize that having a friend is like finally having a home.

“Of course, Dean,” he says, words coming unstuck as his mind does. “Of course. We can take as long as you need.”

Dean smiles at him, and Cas smiles back. And they both know what they’re doing, and they both know the other knows it as well, but Dean isn’t resentful and Cas doesn’t feel guilty, because this is what friends are for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I dropped off the face of the earth for a while, I'm soooo overwhelmed with work ;~; I have a good chunk of the next chapter written already tho!!! I thiiiink there's gonna be 3 more chapters in this?? not entirely sure tho, things keep getting away from me. can't believe i thought this was gonna be a one shot lol.
> 
> As always, you can come give me prompts/ideas or just talk to me at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/


	6. Chapter 6

Dean ends up buying an apricot tart with his penny.

They’re walking through the market when they pass a stall selling all manner of pastries, and the boy literally stops in his tracks.

Cas stops too, a second later, and has to bite his own lip to keep from laughing at the way Dean had reacted.

Dean sees his amusement anyway when he turns from the stall to Cas, but he just gives Cas a sheepish smile, and shrugs.

“I like sweets,” he says, and then Cas does laugh.

The tips of Dean’s ears turn pink from embarrassment, but he’s still smiling crookedly, and doesn’t seem the slightest bit deterred.

“Are you going to buy something?”

“Maybe. Probably. I’ve never had a pastry, before.”

It’s the same thing he’d said at each food stall they’d grabbed a sample from, which at this point had been quite a few.

Cas had already known how deprived Dean had been, but it’s different hearing it, over and over and over.

A list of things that Cas now knows Dean had never tried, before today:

Dried cherries  
Dried plums  
Dried peaches  
Raisins  
Walnuts  
Almonds  
Salted white fish  
Apple cider  
Red wine  
White wine  
Any kind of tea  
Any kind of jam besides currant, which is what Cas keeps at the inn.

And now, pastries as well.

It wouldn’t sadden him so much, if he’d heard this from someone else. After all, it’s not like Cas eats like a king either, and had rarely had any of these items himself except from samples on market day.

From another person, he would assume nothing terrible if told these items had never been tried. He would just assume they lived far from a city, like he did, and had little reason to eat more than bread and milk and meat.

With Dean, though, it’s different. Before Cas found him, Dean had never had milk, or honey, or carrots, or leeks, or cabbage, or beef, or even bread that hadn’t gone stale.

When Cas had eventually found the courage to ask, what, on earth, Dean had eaten at John’s, if not the basic things that make up every peasants’ diet, Dean had simply said he’d eaten porridge.

Cas had stared, waiting for him to continue with his list, until at last he realized that Dean had started and ended it with that one word.

“That’s _it?”_ He’d said in disbelief, and Dean had shrunk before him.

“I’m sorry. I…Sam used to sneak me table scraps sometimes, too. But. I would never steal food from you Sir, I promise.”

So Cas knows, when Dean says “I’ve never tried this before,” what kind of miracle it must seem to him.

He tries not to show his sadness on his face when Dean repeats his refrain about the pastries, not wanting to dampen the moment.

“Why don’t you go look them over?” He suggests, and Dean bounces once on his toes from excitement before going to do just that.

Cas follows him, and stands next to him as he considers the treats laid before him.

Seemingly unconsciously, Dean’s hand reaches over and grasps Cas’s in his own.

Cas freezes, and feels his breath catch in his chest.

Dean doesn’t notice, too consumed in analyzing the different varieties of tarts.

He’s held Dean’s hand before, technically. But this feels different. Every time they’ve held hands, it’s been because Dean was scared, or Cas was stressed, and they’d been reassuring one another.

But now, Dean is holding his hand for no reason. Just because he wants to. He’d just reached for it absently, without thought, as if holding hands is a given when they are close enough together.

Cas feels his face turn hot as flames as he struggles not to react. He doesn’t want to scare Dean off, and doesn’t want to draw attention to their interlocked fingers, like it is something that will disappear if it is acknowledged.

Dean continues to be oblivious. The lady behind the counter sees him blush, though, and her eyes follow his arm down to where their hands meet. She looks back up at him, amusement clear in every line of her tired face.

Cas blushes harder, and prays that the woman won’t say anything.

She doesn’t.

Dean eventually settles on an apricot tart. He asks Cas what his favorite kind of jam is, and Cas responds honestly, too distracted by the warm grip of Dean’s fingers to think to nudge him into making his own decision.

It only occurs to him that maybe he should have once Dean is already in the process of buying the apricot treat. He figures it doesn’t really matter though, as Dean had seemed equally overjoyed at the taste of each jam he’d sampled in the morning.

It costs two farthings, and Dean hands his penny over before receiving his change and his pastry.

Dean takes these things with the hand not clutched in Cas’s, but pulls his other away from Cas’s grip a moment later as he shoves his change into his pocket.

Disappointment washes through Cas, and he tries to ignore it, feeling stupid.

He shoves his hand into his own pocket, in a useless attempt at distracting himself from the lingering warmth on his palm.

“You two enjoy,” the woman says as they leave, and Dean nods shyly, while Cas’s face burns from the knowing note in her voice.

“Thanks,” he chokes out, then pulls Dean quickly away.

*************

Dean doesn’t eat his pastry for a while, seemingly content to just hold it and look at it.

“It’s so pretty,” he tells Cas. “See how orange the center is? And look at the bread part! It’s shiny too!”

“It’s an egg wash,” he tells Dean, and when the boy doesn’t understand goes on to explain, “They brush the top with egg white before they bake it. It gives it that glossy quality you’re noticing.”

“Oh,” Dean replies. “Wow. It’s beautiful.”

And it really is, Cas supposes, jam as orange as daffodils, egg wash reflecting the sunlight like glass.

He never would have thought to consider how lovely a simple pastry can look, besides just taste and smell. But Dean appreciates everything. And Cas appreciates everything too, when he sees the world through Dean’s dazzled eyes.

They stop for lunch after running a few more errands, the effort of the whole day catching up to them. Cas buys them each a skewer of chicken and vegetables from a man selling hot food, meat dripping with grease and charred from being cooked over hot coals.

They find a quiet spot to eat their prizes, on the steps behind the city church, a bit away from the market.

He doesn’t realize how much he’d missed silence until they are away from all the noise.

The bustle of the market is still audible, but it’s far away now, muffled. The sound of the breeze through the trees and the winter birds chirping are much more prominent, sweet sounds that sooth stress he hadn’t known he was carrying like cool water on a burn.

Pulling the bits of cloth out of his ears, Cas lets out a sigh of relief.

It takes him a moment to reorient himself, and when he does, he looks over to Dean.

The boy is sat besides him, staring over with those big earnest eyes. He’s clutching the pastry in one hand, and the skewer in the other, and Cas realizes with a pang that he’s waiting for permission to eat.

“You can eat, Dean,” he assures, and Dean sets his pastry on his lap before digging in to his meal.

Cas follows, and for a while they eat in silence.

When they’re finished, they’re left licking their fingers, chasing the last remnants of the chicken.

“That was good,” Dean says, unprompted.

Cas agrees. It was good. Very good.

“Not as good as my cooking, though, right?”

He teases Dean without thinking about it, and his heart seizes, for a moment, wondering if Dean is going to panic.

He doesn’t though. The boy just looks over to him, and says, completely serious, “No, Sir. Nothing’s as good as the food you make,” and Cas is left blushing for the second time in the hour.

“I was kidding,” he feels the need to explain.

“I know,” Dean tells him. “I wasn’t.”

Cas looks down at his knees.

Besides him, Dean finally picks up his pastry. With both hands, the boy tears it into two equal sized parts.

“For you,” he says, and he holds out one of the pieces to Cas.

Dean is looking at him with a shy expression on his face, biting his lip like he’s nervous.

_Is he afraid?_ Cas wonders.

Perhaps he thinks he has to give half to Cas, or Cas will be angry at him for not offering.

“No, Dean,” he says gently, pushing Dean’s hand away. “It’s all for you. You don’t have to give me half of it.”

Dean lets his arm be moved away as far as Cas pushes it, but doesn’t take it back once Cas has let go. As a result, his arm hangs in the air uncertainly, half outstretched like it isn’t sure if it’s allowed any closer.

Dean doesn’t look grateful, or relieved, or even alarmed. Instead, he looks disappointed, mournful eyes filling with hurt.

Cas immediately wants to apologize, though he isn’t sure what he did wrong.

“I thought apricot jam was your favorite,” Dean says, sounding sad.

“It is,” Cas agrees, and then it clicks. “Dean, did you buy the apricot one because I said it was my favorite? Did you buy it for _me?”_

Dean nods, completely unabashed.

Cas kind of wants to put his head in his hands and groan. He resists, just barely, because he knows how that would seem to Dean.

“Dean,” he explains, trying to sound patient. “Dean, you were supposed to buy something for _yourself.”_

Dean nods again.

“Yes. Thank you for the penny, you’re so nice. I was going to have half the pastry? If that’s ok?”

God.

“Of course it’s ok, Dean. I meant for you to have all of it. And I didn’t- I didn’t mean for you to buy something you thought I would like. I meant for you to buy whatever _you_ wanted.”

“This is what I want,” Dean says simply. “I like sweets. I wanted to buy a pastry.”

And that’s true, Cas supposes, but it doesn’t change that he picked Cas’s favorite flavor instead of his own, and is trying to give half his treat away to him now.

“I know,” Cas continues. “But you should have chosen _your_ favorite flavor. And you don’t have to give half of it away.”

Dean blinks, arm still half outstretched, pastry on his palm like an offering.

“But I want to,” he answers, and he tilts his head like a bird. “You said the penny was mine, and I could do what I wanted with it. I wanted to buy something to share with you.”

_I wanted to buy something to share with you._

His voice is completely sincere, as is his expression.

He’s not afraid.

He’s just…kindhearted.

“Oh,” Cas says, suddenly feeling choked up.

Staring at the misshapen lump of pastry held out between them, his heart melts like the apricot filling.

He feels touched, like he never has before.

“Please, Cas,” Dean mumbles. “You’re my….you’re my friend.”

And that breaks him, hearing the word spoken so hesitantly, so reverently by Dean.

_I’m his friend,_ he realizes, feeling the joy rush through him all over again. _I’m his friend._

He reaches out and takes the pastry.

“Thank you, Dean,” he says sincerely, and Dean smiles at him like he’s done something grand.

Already sitting pretty close, the boy scoots himself closer, so their knees knock together.

The touch doesn’t feel electric, doesn’t make him feel overwhelmingly shy like it had before. It feels casual, and familiar, and, well, _friendly._ Cas finds he likes it just as much as he’d liked holding Dean’s hand.

They eat their pastries in happy silence, and time waits for them with careful kindness as they let it pass them by like wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they're so cute ;~;
> 
> also im extremely busy and running on 2 hours of sleep (i posted this while in zoom class) so it's like not edited at all so. no judging.
> 
> As always you can come give me prompts/ideas or just talk to me at https://ao3gingerswag.tumblr.com/


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